Sunak’s perfect resignation

Rishi Sunak’s resignation speech was classy, generous and a model of the British system at its best. He started by taking personal responsibility for the election disaster, saying (as expected) that he’d resign as party leader as well as prime minister. His next move was not back into No. 10 but into the car and to Buckingham Palace to ask the King to accept his resignation and recommend that he appoints Keir Starmer. The contrast to America’s last change of power is striking.

It’s time to learn the lessons of the campaign, Sunak said. As he spoke, his wife stood in the background with an umbrella as if to illustrate the point. Sunak made the important point about how little fuss there was that a Hindu prime minister with his Indian wife should enter and exit No. 10 and be judged on exactly the same basis as anyone else: competence and quality of government.